Napoleon Bonaparte and the legacy of the French Revolution Book

Terrible biography. Napoleon may have his faults but he deserves a fairer treatment than this. My review is based on less than half of its 900 pages. After the chapter on the Imperial coronation turned into a soap opera starring the Bonaparte family, I decided I couldn't go on. The remainder of the book just seemed too imposing.

Schom turns Napoleon into an amoral monster, eaten up with ambition. He places unfair emphasis on the Egyptian campaign while belittling Napoleon's victories. He spends too much time focusing on the negative side of the Napoleonic regime (censorship, heightened police power, ...) while no account is given of its reforms and the benefits of the return of stability to France. A great deal of trouble is also spent bemoaning the lot of the soldier in Napoleon's army while failing to note that those conditions were no different than those anywhere else in Europe. In some cases, in fact, they would likely have been better. To top it off, the book contains several mistakes in its history and, as I noted above, the style is often too gossipy to be taken seriously. Avoid this biased and untrustworthy account of 'le petit corporal'.